Wedekind on Broadway

I’m heading down to New York City after Christmas with my family, and there is much going on there for anyone interested in German painting and drama.  I wrote earlier about an exciting exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of portraits from the Weimar Republic.  Now a new rock musical – Spring Awakening – has opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theater.  The musical is a creative rendition of Frank Wedekind’s scandalous 1891 play Frühlings Erwachen.  Sounds like an unlikely source for a successful musical in 2006, but Charles Isherwood is ebullient in his praise today in the New York Times:

"The smartest decision made by the creators of this adaptation was to retain the original setting in provincial Germany, to resist a facile attempt at updating the material. It wouldn’t have worked. The painful public silence on the subject of sex that warps the characters’ minds and in some cases destroys their lives would make no sense in a contemporary context. But the yawning gap between the force of desire and the possibilities for its release is not exactly an antique phenomenon. "

"Mr. Sater, who wrote the book and lyrics, remains faithful to the play’s awareness that the discovery of sex can carry in its heady wake both salvation and destruction, particularly when it is coupled with ignorance. Mr. Sheik’s music, spare in its simple orchestrations, lush in the lapping reach of its seductive choruses, embodies the shadowy air of longing that infuses the show, the excitement shading into fear, the joy that comes with a chaser of despair. The singing throughout is impassioned and affecting, giving powerful voice to the blend of melancholy and hope in the songs."

Sounds very good; maybe a successful run will revive interest in Wedekind and spawn new productions of his masterpiece, the Lulu play Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box).